AN: Currently 13 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
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Once again, Anahrin kept on grilling Mark with the ideas of propulsion systems until he was satisfied with Mark's progression. Once he was, he shifted his lessons to focus on another topic.
"Alright, I think you've had enough of engines. You seem to have a good enough grasp of things, and I think it's time we move on to your navigational drives."
The projection magnified the crystalline chamber, violet lightning spidering along its conduits. "Jump Drives are like a knife in the hand of a seasoned assassin, in that they can be used quickly and decisively. However, they are shackled to only being used within a certain reach. You cannot use humanity's current jump drive unless you are within the range of a mapped jump point."
The map bloomed into star systems, dotted with glowing nodes.
"While you slept, I put together some climbing gear and managed to scavenge the data from one of the most recently downed ships. This one was on one of the peaks above my facility, a Heavy Frigate named the Perseverance, with all data pointing to it being your Heavy Frigate. Though its reactor was beyond repair and leaking, its systems were functional enough to have data extracted from them. After I extracted the data, I attempted to make my way to the reactor, but it seemed like that was blocked off from the inside. So I climbed out of the ship, looked around for a bit, and noticed that I had managed to miss the giant chunk of armor missing in its rear. It is honestly a miracle that even after almost getting your reactor blown off, you managed to survive the crash and land in my facility, or rather, fall into it. Not only that, but the fact that the reactor didn't blow is just another of the universe's marvels. I shut it down before making my way back down to study the data. According to what I pulled, these are all the jump points humanity has given a green light to use."
The hologram expanded until Mark felt like he was floating inside a constellation, jump nodes winking across the darkness like stars too perfect to be real. Anahrin gestured toward them with a clawed hand. "Here is the greatest strength of your Jump Drives… and their greatest weakness. They do not take you where you want to go. Jump Drives are inherently designed to only take you where someone else has already carved a road. There are countless stars in this vast expanse, but you may only ever walk the handful of paths your maps have provided. I do not disagree that they are convenient, yes, but unfortunately, convenience is the cousin of chains."
Mark leaned forward, eyes scanning the lattice of green-lit nodes. "And the chains are by design. Everyone in the Navy knows that corporations are the ones in control, that wars and rebellions are always sponsored by them. And what do corporations like the least? Things they can't control, just like people going where they can't keep an eye on things and have no control."
A smile tugged at the corner of Anahrin's mouth. "Finally, you're beginning to sound like an engineer." He tapped one of the glowing nodes and data flared outward: energy readouts, cooldown cycles, activation times. "Let us break down how your Jump Drives truly function, and how they could function better."
The crystalline chamber reappeared in cross-section, its core pulsing like a heart under strain.
"First of all, range. Humanity's drives are… laughably stunted. Ships travelling extreme distances are only staggering from node to node, limited not by physics but by fear of what can be discovered. The lattice crystals that form the drive's heart are stable for far longer stretches than you use them for. However, you are taught to cut them off early, you are taught to fear a sudden resonance cascade. No matter who the manufacturer is, the engineers have never bothered to solve the harmonic problems that plague them. If an engineer were to, let's say, balance the crystal lattice with a counter-resonant chamber, then your average drive has the possibility to suddenly triple the range before the matrix even thinks of destabilizing. A man of your background should know what this means, Mark?"
Mark nodded his head slowly. "That would mean that ships could leap across multiple systems in one jump, not hopscotch around from node to node."
Anahrin smiled at him as he flicked to another set of schematics. "Precisely so. The second thing about the Jump Drives is the cooldown times. A Jump Drive must rest for about an hour after a leap unless you want to risk damage, right? Wrong. That is not true, or well, it technically is for the current drives aboard all ships. The thing that truly needs rest isn't the drive itself, but the crude coolant system strapped around it. Replace that waste of material with phase-shifted heat sinks, something that I would admit is only possible if you've got the materials, and you could cut cooldown to maybe 8 minutes. You know better than I do what this would mean with the current drive setup of all ships, Mark. If a single fleet were to be equipped with this, then they'd be able to jump, fight, and jump again before an enemy even gets a read on your position or recalibrates their scanners. A whole new door of warfare tactics would be open."
Mark whistled low, his mind running rampant with the tactical implications this style of warfare would create.
"Third, activation time," Anahrin continued, voice tightening. "Currently, Jump Drives spool like arthritic bones, ninety, sometimes one hundred and thirty seconds of charge before they engage. That is not physics. That is pure laziness. Using linear charge arrays when you should be using stacked parallel arrays that would draw power in overlapping cycles, not single streams. You could be gone in twenty seconds instead of ninety."
Mark's mouth curved into a sharp grin. "Twenty seconds… hell, that could turn a fleet's retreat into an ambush."
"Exactly," Anahrin said, eyes gleaming. "Ships would vanish before railguns ever bracketed them. Engagements would collapse into chaos. Whoever holds superior Jump tech dictates the tempo of a war."
Mark could tell that although Anahrin wasn't a warmonger, speaking of the implications of his creation in a war brought a sense of excitement to him. The projection flickered, this time shifting into crude comparisons of the current Jump Drive arcs stretching like tired leaps and his proposed versions vaulting like lightning bolts across systems.
Mark rubbed his chin. "So… what you're saying is that you can triple the range, slash the cooldown time to a fraction, and you decrease the activation time to what is pretty much a blink in the middle of a battle. And all of it is possible with changes so simple that it's ridiculous humanity hasn't discovered them."
Anahrin's smirk broadened. "Yes and no. It's not ridiculous that humanity hasn't discovered them; it's only a matter of time, maybe 4 decades, give or take a few years. The problem with humanity is that it worships the altar of 'it works well enough'. But well enough is a coffin with a nicely wrapped bright ribbon on top. And now you get the opportunity to push past mediocrity into mastery. And the moment you do, Mark, then that is the moment you will begin To Conquer The Stars themselves. You could..." Anahrin said, his voice trailing off as if he had come to a new realization, "...start a new version of my... Strathari civilization... a new dawn for Humanity. To eventually rise back to its origins."
The holo dimmed, leaving only the faint violet glow of the Jump core, pulsing like a heart waiting for stronger hands to wield it.
"Now," Anahrin said softly, "shall I show you what happens when you stop obeying the map entirely?"
The holographic map shimmered back to life, green nodes gleaming in their neat lattice across human space.
"These," Anahrin said, gesturing to the points, "are not just jump points. They are coordinates with each node being nothing more than a precisely calculated anchor point in spacetime, coordinates so exact, so stable, that a Jump Drive can easily lock onto them and fold the ship across the void."
Mark's brow furrowed. "So, what? I mean, I already know that Jump Drives work based on the coordinates you set, as long as there is a jump point there."
"You wouldn't be wrong," Anahrin replied. "Humanity only trusts routes that have been measured, tested, and confirmed by fleets of surveyors, pretty much prohibiting you from doing a jump to a place unless someone has already dragged their ship through it and mapped it."
The hologram shifted, showing the lattice inside a Jump Drive as threads of light weaved into a crystalline core. "Your drives are shackled by mathematics. The hardware is clearly capable of much more, but your charts only feed them what corporations have deemed as safe, making your movements predictable."
Mark tapped his chin. "So this would then be a problem with our computer and navigation systems, right? If I want to have better and more precise coordinates, then my navigation systems would need to be beefed up to compute all of that data... however, not even the Navy has navigational systems that advanced."
Anahrin's eyes gleamed. "You're right, because then that would mean that you could go anywhere, unshackled by laws, out of the scope of any prying and controlling eyes and arms." The holo flickered to red for a moment, showing shattered ships tumbling through warped space. "But, miscalculate by a fraction, and you scatter across light-years. Precision is like a double-edged blade. On one edge is smooth sailing as you travel through space, while on the other is pure and utter annihilation. Honestly, computation at that level is thousands of years away for humanity, a couple of hundred for you. So in the meantime, I'd say you should focus on increasing the distance of systems you can jump, how many nodes you can skip instead of just jumping to the nearest ones."
Mark swallowed hard. "So… what about Warp Drives? Do they work under the same principles?"
Anahrin gave a small chuckle that quickly turned into a coughing fit. Once he got it under control, he answered Mark's question. "Again, yes and no. You see, a dagger and a railgun work the same way; in that they will both put a hole into the body of a man. However, they are most definitely not under the same principle."
He pulled the hologram wider, the green node-lattice fading away, replaced by a flowing ribbon of shifting light that curled and folded. "Warp Drives are not bound to fixed coordinates the way Jump Drives are. Where a Jump folds you directly to an anchor point, a Warp drive bends the fabric of space around you, sliding your vessel along a compressed corridor without the need to have such precise coordinates. It is far more efficient, overwhelmingly faster, allows you to travel much further, and at the same time, it is ridiculously more dangerous. A misaligned Jump drops you into empty space, perhaps scattering your very being, along with anything else within the bubble, into atoms. A misaligned Warp drops you sideways into dimensions that anything carbon-based was never meant to touch."
"Warp drives are an entirely different philosophy of travel. With Jump Drives, you fight space on its own terms, brute-forcing your way to a node. With Warp Drives, you kind of cheat it, tricking space into letting you slide between its folds. The Vulpinians seem to have gotten the idea down, implementing it into their ships, which is part of the reason why humanity lost to them so easily. They allow for faster strikes and deeper incursions, tactics that made human admirals curse the very stars."
The hologram shifted again, and an elegant, almost glowing lattice was now replaced by an endless sprawl of luminous tunnels winding through blackness.
"And above Warp Drives," Anahrin continued, his voice quieter now, almost reverent, "is the Hyperdrive." A single brilliant arc ignited, leaping across the map like a lightning bolt, so far and fast it dwarfed the others.
"That," he said, "was what my people mastered. True freedom. True conquest. A system that did not need to trick space, nor did it need to brute-force its way through. The difference between Jump, Warp, and Hyperdrive is the difference between a stone Spear, a Rifle, and a dreadnaught's main battery Rail Cannon."
Mark's eyes gleamed, and curiosity overcame him. "So come on, don't be shy, and teach me how to make hyperdrives. Why settle for Jump drives or Warp drives when Hyperdrive is sitting right there?"
Anahrin sighed. "Because you are not ready. Humanity is not ready. Hyperdrive requires mastery of principles you cannot even begin to theorize, alternate energy states, gravity threading, and dimensional stabilization. If humanity began this very moment, it would take them three centuries to crawl close enough to a prototype, and that would be if your civilization's corporations all came together and worked toward the same goal. Do not let your ambition blind you to your reality. I can see the ambition in you, but giving you the keys to Hyperdrive would be the same as dooming humanity itself."
Mark clenched his jaw, frustrated but sobered. "…Ok, I get it, Humanity has a tendency to be quite self-destructive, and Hyperdrive would allow us to speedrun our way to extinction, though I still don't know how. So that leaves me with taking a leap for Warp Drives, then. That's the next rung on the ladder anyway, isn't it?"
Anahrin nodded once. "Yes. However, Warp Drives are not a mere evolution of Jump drives, but an entire revolution. They are faster, more flexible, and untethered to points. But it will not be easy. Not even if you got your hands on Vulpinian drives and grafted them to your hull like Stellar Dynamics has done. They won't be able to implement them correctly even if they manage to reverse engineer them, because Warp drives demand finesse, understanding, and above all, respect. Because Warp drives do not simply fold space, they slip you between alternate dimensions."
Mark frowned. "Alternate dimensions? As in… you travel through a parallel universe or something?"
"Not exactly," Anahrin said, his fingers weaving through the hologram as new projections of warped space blossomed. "Think of them as layers, thinner than an atom, laid atop our own reality. Warp Drives pull you into those layers, where distance is distorted, time bent, and travel is faster… but stray too far, lose your bearings, and you may not find your way back. My people lost many ships before we shifted to perfecting the Hyperdrive, not in battle, but in between layers of reality. Lost, never to be seen ever again."
The hologram dimmed to a faint violet glow again, the Warp corridors fading into ghostly afterimages.
"So listen to what I'm going to tell you. Warp Drives are a way forward, while Hyperdrives are a thing of legend, for now. And while Jump drives are stagnant, they work sufficiently well for the time being."
"Now, we've been sidetracked for long enough. Let's shift away from drive technology and talk about other propulsion systems, like maneuvering thrusters," Anahrin said as he flicked his fingers and the hologram zoomed in on a corvette. Its engines dulled to ghostly outlines, leaving only the faint blue cones of its maneuvering thrusters burning against the dark.
"Though they are small and seem simple, they dictate everything. From how fast you pivot to how tight you bank, and both of those will determine how well you survive in a mid-range encounter where missiles and torpedoes are too inefficient to use, and you come face to face with the big guns pointed at you. Unfortunately, humanity treats them like afterthoughts. Inefficiently bolted on, causing them to bleed you much-needed fuel."
"Now look closer." He magnified one of the thruster cones until Mark could see the plasma streams inside, turbulent and uneven. "This? This is sloppiness. Over-pressurized propellant is dumped raw into the chamber. That's just wasted energy that, with proper injector shaping, could be stabilized, reducing turbulence. Do you know what that buys you?"
Mark shrugged. "Better efficiency?"
"Yes, better efficiency. Just like with the engines, think of wasting twenty percent less fuel while maintaining the same thrust or even increasing it. Over the course of a long stretch, that would be the difference between a ship limping on fumes and arriving with enough fuel to spare. This is just another way to enter the business world, too. Everyone would want it because everyone wants to save on fuel."
He rotated the hologram again, highlighting the placement of thrusters along the corvette's hull. "And here, the spacing is just horrible. Human design spreads them too wide, forcing them to fight each other for control. Cross-thrust means wasted vectors, and if you just rebalance the geometry and angle them for complementary burn, then you could shave seconds off rotation times. In battle, seconds are eternity, and this would make docking a much faster process."
Mark nodded his head in understanding.
Anahrin bared his teeth in a grin. "You don't need exotic alloys or experimental vectoring fields. Rather, what is needed is discipline that greed doesn't allow. Even simple additions like recycling heat bleed into preheating injectors, or running magnetic collars to focus the exhaust stream, could increase thrust output by about thirteen percent."
The corvette hologram spun, now performing a lazy roll as its thrusters fired in bursts. Anahrin slowed the playback, highlighting the uneven pulsing. "And this… the control algorithms currently employed in a large number of ship models are archaic. They fire thrusters in brute force bursts that can be smoothened with layered burn control that allows for low flow correction first, then power surge only if needed. Implement these changes, and I can assure you that a ship's maneuvering thrusters will respond like the tip of a sword. A faster response time that mitigates waste while maintaining more control."
Mark nodded as he took down notes. "So, some of the most impactful changes don't necessarily need to be a complete overhaul of a ship; rather, small changes. I know it's like the twentieth time you've told me, but little changes have big impacts. A ship could be twenty, maybe thirty percent more agile, without touching the main drives or changing the hull."
"Yes, when an engineer is lazy, complacent, or willfully blind," Anahrin said. "Mediocrity, stagnation, and obedience to corporations could all be guilty of the current ship designs and their lack of efficiency. Now, I want you to take some of what I've taught you and take the next few days to try and see what you can do with it."
After Anahrin's words, Mark went into the virtual space to practice what he had learned. He would come out for rest every couple of hours, sometimes frustrated and other times with questions for Anahrin, who would always give some sort of cryptic response that would wind itself up to 'Have patience and keep on trying. You'll get it eventually.' Mark knew he was right, and he would always end up understanding things and how they went together through trial and error, but it would still irk him that Anahrin wouldn't guide him better through the process.